On Monday, while the cameras were fixed on that famous black door in Downing Street, something important was happening 165 miles away. A small team of officials and advisers were walking into an office building in Manchester to set about the remaking of the British state.

This was the beginning of No 10 North: the first major act of this government and what I hope will be seen as its most defining.

Over the course of the past 40 years, Britain has taken a series of wrong turns. In the 1980s, political power was centralised, economic power was privatised and communities were deindustrialised. Many of the places most affected have not recovered since and are still in decline. They have been unable to turn things around because they simply do not have the necessary power to do so. This feeling of neglect has lain underneath the increasingly fractious politics that has bedevilled Britain in recent times.

Solving this problem is crucial for the cohesion of our country. It is something with which it has wrestled for a long time but never got right. We have seen gimmicks, such as levelling up. We have seen the shifting of bits of the British state around the map to no great effect.

Why has none of it worked? It is partly because, even though Whitehall departments have set up outposts, decision-making power has remained in London. It is also because, in the very centre of government itself, Nos 10 and 11 have not been sufficiently aligned – particularly on........

© The Guardian